Posted
by
Soulskillon Tuesday April 01, 2014 @02:37PM
from the unwelcoming-is-unwelcome dept.

PortWineBoy writes: "The Beeb is reporting that OkCupid is prompting Mozilla Firefox users to switch browsers over Brendan Eich's support of Prop 8 in California in 2008. Users are met with a message stating that OKCupid would prefer no one access their site with Mozilla software. Eich is the new CEO of Mozilla."

Intolerance abounds these days under the theme of "shouting down bigotry". People blithely unaware they're acting much the same as those who opposed civil rights laws in the first place.

In this specific case, however, eHarmony is perfect for anyone offended by OKCupid's behavior, given their own history here. Heck, this could improve the utility of both dating services by filtering up front on this issue.

There's nothing wrong with not tolerating bigotry. If someone believes something stupid or morally objectionable and spends money trying to deprive a group of people of their rights because of their sexuality, it's perfectly fine to criticise them.

The key difference is that gay people can't help being gay, any more than black people can help being black or women can help being women. They guy's view is something he decided on himself, something he could easily change, something he chooses to believe.

Shouting down bigotry is the best way to deal with bigotry. It doesn't violate anyone's rights. Laws which deny people equal protection under the law actually do violate people's rights.

So yes shouting down bigotry and opposing civil rights are the same thing in the sense that they are both shouting, except that one is shouting in support of bigotry and the other in opposition to it, which is in my view, a big enough of a difference to make supporting one and not the other perfectly reasonable.

To me this is like claiming that the slavery abolitionists were just as intolerant as the slave owners because they were intolerant of slavery. Yes you can look at it this way, but I don't think it serves any real purpose other than to confuse the issue.

I don't think it's profound at all to claim that those opposed to intolerance are intolerant of intolerance. This just seems like an obvious and necessary exception to the concept of intolerance.

You must be pretty young, or have a very selective memory, because when I voiced my objections to the US invading Iraq in 2002 and '03, I encountered quite a bit of intolerance for differing opinions. If you had to choose between being called an asshole and having your company boycotted, or being called a traitor and threatened with physical violence and potentially imprisonment, which would you choose?

I'm writing this post via Firefox, and would agree that this boycott is a bit silly (if I'm going to boycott the products of every company whose CEO has stupid, fucked up political opinions, I might as well pack up and go live in a log cabin in the woods and make my own soap). But laying this at the feet of "The Left" much less Obama is utter horseshit. Hell, I remember when I was a kid in the late 1970's, and my dad wouldn't take us to Burger King because they were supposedly supporting communists somehow.

The Left has become fascist in the name of tolerance. Tolerance will be imposed and all who stand in the way will put against the wall.

Yeah, I mean on the one hand we have people who wish to use the power of the state to deny the recognition of relationships of a minority group because it doesn't fit with their own view of the world, and on the other we have people refusing to use a company's product because they disagree with the politics of the CEO.

Well, since you brought it up, I am a follower of Jesus. And I take a very pragmatic approach to homosexuality.

The Bible says that homosexuality is a sin... period... However, as an American, it is not the job of the government to legislate morality. Women are not killed for adultery these days. Drunks are not thrown in prison (as long as they don't drive). It is not the job of the government to make sure that everybody lives a clean wholesome life.

I can honestly say that if you are gay, I really don't care one bit. Really! You just have to understand that, if the Bible is right, that you will not be able to get into Heaven leading a lifestyle of sin. That includes not only homosexuality, but adultery, drunkenness, lying, anger, etc. If you choose to accept the eternal consequences, do whatever makes you happy. It is really none of my business.

I do love the stereotyping where you say:

My religion teaches that you are subhuman scum.

Nope. Wrong. You are a sinner, as am I. The reality is that we are ALL scum, especially me, which is why we all need Jesus. I have simply tried to turn my back on sin as much as I can and I trust Jesus to take care of the rest. There is NO sin so bad that the blood of Jesus cannot cover it -- all you have to do is trust Him. The TRUE followers of Jesus do NOT think that you are scum. They think that you are worth saving and they want you to be in Heaven too. They do it not out of malice, but out of love.

Christians come from a completely different world view. The atheist believes that this life is all that there is, so do whatever you want to to make yourself happy, as long as you do not hurt others. The Christian believes that there IS an afterlife, and our job is to help as many people get there with us as they can by turning from ALL sins, and turning towards God.

The thing that you have to realize is that there are more than a few jerks out there (cough. Westboro Baptist Church. cough. and lots of others. cough.) who have totally forgotten the "love" of Jesus. Those guys are best ignored.

Now, if you really want to be treated as subhuman scum, try Islam, where homosexuality will get you killed immediately.

The bible actually says that wearing wool and linen at the same time is a sin, period. It says some wishy washy stuff that can be interpreted as homosexuality (only the male kind) being a sin, maybe, if you choose to interpret it that way.

I believe one of the main characters in the bible has something to say about casting stones that might be apropos though.

know you feel like you're being civil, but telling people that "It's just my opinion that you shouldn't be allowed to marry who you want" is far more insulting than I think you realize it is.

I realize it. And I even agree that his political views may reasonably be seen as offensive, or wrong-headed, or harmful. But you're missing my point. Or rather points.

The first point is: those are his personal views, not those of his company. Attempting to punish the entire (large) project because of the opinions of one person is just stupid. Even if they felt that what he did is a crime, trying punish everybody else for his behavior is not exactly acceptable behavior.

The second point is: he is ENTITLED, legally and morally, to his opinions on politics. If you don't like his views, vote against them. That is the way the United States is supposed to work. Here are a couple of quotes that illustrate the point:

"Freedom of speech is worthless without the freedom of offensive speech. Goebbels and Himmler were for freedom of speech... that was inoffensive to the state." -- Noam Chomsky

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"I may disagree with everything that you say, but I shall defend to the death you're right to say it." -- Voltaire

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"Popular speech does not need protection. Part of the Founders' concern in writing the First Amendment was that majorities might try to use the force of government to silence people with unpopular views." -- U.S. Supreme Court, National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 1977

The people who run OKCupid are afforded those same rights. They chose to run an ad on their website bringing the issue to users' attentions, and giving them instructions how to act. Those users are then free to choose to switch browsers, quit using OKCupid, and hell, they could even choose to continue to browse the website using Mozilla. You're linking all of these quotes saying that unpopular speech must be offered the same protection as popular speech, but so far the only difference I see here is that you agree with Eich's views and disagree with OKCupid's, and you've reached the conclusion OKCupid is doing something either illegal or immoral (or something along those lines). Why are Eich's actions acceptable to you while OKCupid's are not?

No. It changed on March 31. I think it is simply a marketing trick. Pretend to take a stand. Gets lots of buzz for free. Give the impression that you are still hip. Never mind that for the last year or two, Okcupid has been showing that they don't even care about their own user community. Function has been reduced drastically. Non-mainstream users have been marginalized. Forums are no longer monitored. The only communication that comes out is the occasional obvious lie. "We are working hard and making the site better for you!" (my removing all the features that you used and adding virtually nothing)

In this case at least, it is due to the new CEO not adhering to 'live and let live'. Gay rights activists rarely care about people's personal religious beliefs, it is when they put resources into having those beliefs enshrined in law and thus using state power to force their religion on others that people get annoyed.

You can, but others can voice their objection, like OKCupid does here. Freedom of speech is for all, and does not mean freedom from criticism.

And other can voice their objection on the objection. And in this case there are several good reasons to object to OKCupid's objection even if you completely disagree with Eich:

1. Pragmatism: Living together in a democracy requires people to work together even if they have strong disagreements in their religious or political beliefs. For this reason objections should primarily be aimed directly at the belief itself and not at the persons holding them. This enables working together even with disagreements.

2. Fairness: Even if you disagree with someone you should still not misrepresent his stance. OKCupid claims gay relationships would illegal if Mr. Eich got his way on gay marriage. But Gay relationships would still be legal, even when gay marriage are banned. So you can not claim Eich wants gay relationships to be illegal, just because he supported California's Prop 8.

3. Proportionality: Brendan Eich donated $1000 for Prop 8. A rather small sum of money for a high profile engineer such as Eich. This clearly not the most important topic for Eich. He is not a major spokesperson against gay marriage, he is best known for his Javascript work and not for his opposition to gay marriage. The response should have a reasonable proportion to the thing that is being criticized. Brendan Eich's $1000 are now 100x more visible than the $1,000,000 by Alan Ashton.

OKCupid is briefly bringing it to the attention of Firefox users and then allowing them to continue using the site unimpeded. As 'retaliation' goes that is pretty damn mild. Also keep in mind this is an issue that directly effects their business model, so this is not just some random person's political speech, this is someone who was engaged in passing a class of law what not only would impact nearly a 10th of their user base but would by proxy impact their corporate mission and profits.

I am also getting rather tired of this 'making people afraid to voice their viewpoints' meme. The anti-gay movement is not even remotely afraid to voice their views, they are in a very strong position. Even if they were, maybe they should be. The groups behind these campaigns are generally accustomed to being on the giving side of discrimination to the point they see any loss of their privileged position as some type of persecution. Thus they tend to want immunity for actually being called to task for the things they say and do and whine when they do not get it, even when what they were trying to accomplish was worse on others. So maybe they should actually fear some repercussions, it might make them think more about people unlike themselves.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.

It is very much a religious issue for many people.

That's just artifacts of the English translation being unable to convey the true meaning of the scriptures. It doesn't remotely mean the same thing when read in the original Klingon.

It's not about beliefs here. It's about what he tried to do because of them. I can assume you would have no problem working for a Christian, but how might you feel about one who was actively campaigning to make Sunday church attendance mandatory for everyone? Would you care to support his endeavor even indirectly?

But making a stand against someone because they're gay seems petty...and I'm straight.What happened to live and let live?

Two separate issues, I think.

From an orthodox Christian perspective, making a stand against homosexual conduct is making a stand for homosexual persons. To orthodox Christians, practicing homosexuality is sin, and unrepentant sin is a path towards eternal destruction. To be "pro homosexuality" would, for such Christians, be like being "pro all-you-can-eat buffet" for morbidly obese people. It's what they want, but (on the Christian view), it's directly contrary to their long-term well-being.

The "live-and-let-live" issue is quite separate. I don't think there's anything in classical Christian theology that requires Christians to pursue the legislation of Christian behavior.

Christians that hold that view need a STRONG lesson in civics then. Its fine they hold that view, but we are going to constantly remind them it is immoral to force their morality on the rest of us. This is exactly where the religious need to be reminded of what the limits of tolerance are.

Christians that hold that view need a STRONG lesson in civics then. Its fine they hold that view, but we are going to constantly remind them it is immoral to force their morality on the rest of us. This is exactly where the religious need to be reminded of what the limits of tolerance are.

Unless you're a uniquely talented moral philosopher, you are unable to define "moral" in a way that all rational persons would accept. So I think you're just kicking the can down the road by saying that you plan to give Christians a lesson.

OK Cupid is in the process of getting rid of all Javascript on the site, since Brendan Eich was the creator of that too. All interactive content will be replaced with the more LGBT-friendly Adobe Flash.

I'm fully in support of gay marriage, and have been to a few same-sex ceremonies for friends.

But in no way do I support the demonization or boycott of people just because they have a different opinion of something than I do. To me that's a for of bigotry itself, and why would I want to be bigoted?

I'm pretty sure that there are almost no two people on earth who have the same opinion on every single subject. If we go down this road of shunning those who think differently, we all wind up as islands - and not the fun kind with umbrellas in in drinks, for we will have shunned all of the umbrella makers...

It was not just his opinion. Eich donated good money for a law that would discriminate a minority. Even if Eich did not donated, but just wrote in some private blog "gay people should be discriminated by the state of California", that makes him a bigot and a not acceptable behaviour in a civilized democratic country. To call out on him is the minimum what people should do.

Sure, he have his right to voice his opinion. But people have also their right to call out on him for his bigotry. Sounds like you just l

But in no way do I support the demonization or boycott of people just because they have a different opinion of something than I do. And how else do you fight them in a civilized way? Shoting them? Igniting riots against them?Those idiots 'believe' they are right and base their live decissions on it. There needs to be a public way to show them how wrong they are. A call for boycott is the easiest and cheap and pretty civilized.

Did he use his own money or did he use use the companies money for this?Does his personal views and how he chooses to spend his money in this way seem to conflict with managing the Mozilla Foundation?Is their any evidence that he as a CEO tried to make Gay Customers/Employees/Contributors feel unwelcome in this institution.

As far as we know he just doesn't like the idea of Gay Marriage, that is a far cry from being a radical anti-gay advocate.

We have this silly notion just because someone doesn't 100% allign with the party, that some how they are 100% against it.

When did marriage become a basic human right? Why is the government involved pro or con with it to begin with? Why is it only limited to two people?

The government originally became involved in marriage because the family is the building block of society and assisting in the foundation of stable families helps society function well. Now that marriage is seen as being all about and only about the people being married, and them being able to be labelled as such, that is no longer the case. Except prohibitions against polyamory to be next on the chopping block. People are already lining up. This is not about the ability to live your life the way you want.. because no one is preventing that now (and even where that is the case, the laws are being rapidly changed to fix that). It's now about having the ability to be validated by society. As the law traditionally stands, no one's rights are being violated, society just acknowledges that its social and biological bases are a net positive. There are already many, many prohibitions with respect to marriage: You cannot marry a relative, you cannot marry a child, you cannot marry more than one person at a time, and yet every one of these prevents people from living the life they want to live... and for good reasons, most of which also stem from the fact that these kinds of "marriages" are completely orthogonal to propagation of the race, and some are harmful in other ways as well. But it goes beyond that. Marriage is recognized and given a special status because it is the means by which society propagates itself, otherwise it's no different than a two-member club, and we all have the Constitutional right of free association.

The question I have is this: If any two people are able to declare one another as legal heirs to property, hospital visiting rights, joint tax returns, etc., what rights are being deprived if such a status is not called a "marriage"?

You have not been paying attention to me then. I constantly point out that, as a confirmed bachelor with so little interest in relationships that I've never even had a girlfriend (I've rejected dates and made people cry, which confuses the shit out of me), gay marriage increases the percentage of the tax burden that I must cover. All these married people pay less in taxes, but what about people who don't believe in marriage? People who raise children and have a family without a state institution involved, or who just don't engage in that kind of relationship? We're taxed more, and when some section of the population is promoted into that privileged class they pay less taxes and who makes up the bulk of the difference when the tax hikes come back around?

Marriage exists solely as a societal mechanism to enforce the concept of a nuclear family. In Fredrick Pohl's Heechee Saga, the Heechee don't have marriage and don't form nuclear families; women become fertile, they have sex (or die from arousal stress if not mated with), then they become productive members of society for another year. Men and women don't live together and raise children; their entire society functions as a unit, all working to the betterment of the whole, and so they never developed the need to form protective groups.

Human marriage binds people through inconvenience. The relationship is long dead after several years, both of them are fucking other people and lying about it, they hate each other, but divorce is hard. For the longest time divorce wasn't even legal: Henry VIII used to execute his wives so he could remarry. Marriage is an institution to forcefully create a fundamentally unnatural group unit of society called "family" as a replacement to the fundamentally natural group unit of society called "tribe".

On top of that, we give married couples big tax deductions--which become even bigger when they have children, and are not as significant when they have a dual income because women belong in the kitchen and not in the work force. Those of us who aren't married are subsidizing those who are married. With money. We are paying more money, they are paying less. It's as if we started on fair, even ground, all paid our fair share, and then round two comes along and the tax man takes part of our money and gives it to married people. It's the same outcome. Now there are more of them taking our money.

Why is marriage a "basic human right?" It's never been a basic human right. And the concept of a gay marriage never existed in the 6,000 years of recorded history until about 15 years ago.

I'm not making a stance on whether I am for or against gay marriage, but it is not a right. The only real purpose of marriage licensing is to make divorce proceedings easier. Since 90% of contract law is arguing whether or not an enforceable contract ever existed, the family courts short circuit that process and require verification that those who want to get married aren't already married to somebody else, are of legal age, not being coerced, etc. This is why when I got my marriage license it came with a 30 page booklet on how to get a divorce. A marriage license is not a bonus cookie the state gives you for being straight and in love. It just makes it easier for the court to adjudicate your divorce later. Grats, gays. You won the right to gay divorce.

Which raises another interesting question. If two women get divorced, how does the family court judge know who to blame everything on since there's no man involved? And if two men get divorced, do they just burn the house down because there's no woman to give it to?

Want to get unpaid product placement on BBC? Boycott Mozilla! I suppose that not watching Ender's Game is already not enough.News for tomorrow: Kazakhstan Airlines cancel flights to Vatican quoting lack of official support for gay priests from the Pope.

So we're politicizing browser selection now? This amounts to dragging end users into a political dispute that they have nothing to do with. Is this really a road we want to go down? How long before people start blocking IE because they don't like Microsoft's business tactics, or before Apple starts blocking Google Chrome users with a message complaining about alleged patent infringement?

Once this Pandora's box is open, it will be impossible to close. This time it may be aimed at Brendan Eich for the heinous crime of holding onto outdated views of gay marriage a whole two years longer than President Obama, but next time it could be anyone.

I support open source for purely political reasons. I stopped using IE for mostly political reasons. I don't use FF anyways but I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that people might not use FF for political reasons.

There's an important point that I think is often lost in these discussions. Orthodox Christian theology maintains several points: (1) Homosexuality is a sin, (2) unrepentant sin goes hand-in-hand with alienation from God, and (3) alienation from God leads to both unhappiness in this present life and a missed opportunity for happiness after death.

Based on that set of axioms, it can be completely loving to encourage someone to repent of his sins and choose to follow Jesus. Practicing homosexuality is a sign that someone isn't doing that. It would therefore be unloving or even hateful to affirm homosexual relations.

Now I'm sure 90% of the Slashdot crowd disagrees with those axioms. And it's certainly the case that a person can proclaim to be Christian but actually hate gay people. But there are some Christians for whom that's not the case, and I don't think any of us knows Mozilla's CEO well enough to guess in which group he sits.

It should be noted that there are also Christians who look at what Jesus had to say on the subject (basically, nothing), and don't worry about it too much. Note that the Old Testament is an interesting historical document, but it's not what Christianity is all about. In spite of the noise made about it by Atheists and Christians alike.

Plus the Lutherans who look at what Martin Luther had to say on the subject of marriage (it's the government's business who can marry whom and when, not the Church's (thou

I was presenting a model in which that guy might have had the best of intentions, while still engaging in politics that some disagree with. In doing so, I was trying to argue that we shouldn't impugn his motives without more information.

Also, I was using the word "orthodox" in the lower-case. I didn't specifically mean the Russian / Eastern / Greek / etc. Orthodox denominations.

Based on that set of axioms, it can be completely loving to encourage someone to repent of his sins and choose to follow Jesus. Practicing homosexuality is a sign that someone isn't doing that. It would therefore be unloving or even hateful to affirm homosexual relations.

He didn't "encourage someone to repent". He contributed money to an effort to institutionalize oppression in the law. His actions affected others, so those who disagree are entitled to do the same.

I agree completely. The problem is, we don't have a universally accepted theory about what makes a given law just or unjust to impose on those citizens who don't like it. We all have some laws that strike us as oppressive.

Some see this CEO's advocacy of Prop 8 as oppression. Many Christians see their being forced to support gay marriages (case in point, that wedding cake bakery story from a few months ago) as a form of oppression against them. I see being forced to pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffet as a form of oppression.

Without a unanimously agreed-upon standard regarding when it's right for a majority to impose its will on the minority, I don't see how we can non-hypocritically single out just a single person or issue in a case like this.

Prop Eight defined marriage (legal) as between a man and a woman. This has been the historic case for thousands of years for all but a few examples. And most of the exceptions were Polygamists (and occasional Polyandrous). From a Historical perspective, gay "marriage" is something that didn't exists until very recently. Saying society is bigoted because of this long standing tradition (one man, one woman) is simply nothing more than projection.

1) The purposes of marriage and acceptance of that was for Progeny. Gay people cannot procreate (adoption, artificial and out of wedlock sexual relations not withstanding)

2) Benefits that were granted by government was to allow for Families (biologically impossible with gays) to have societal support for raising children and wealth (asset) transfers to the children.

Neither of those two things are "bigoted".

As a Libertarian, I realize that "gay" people are pushing the historical boundries for marriage apart. But I rather doubt they realize the full extent these changes will eventually take. Do they support Polygamy or other plural marriages? If not, does that make them bigoted? How about letting me "marry" my daughter to gain the government benefits granted to gay people for the transfer of wealth and other assets (retirement benefits) to her generation? If not, is that bigoted?

The best thing we can do is get Government out of the "marriage" business (a left over of religion in the first place) and just deal with people as individuals. The smallest minority is that of the individual. IF government doesn't grant the same rights and privileges to the individual as it does to the most discriminated group, then we have already lost our liberties to Group Politics.

So it'd be alright if Firefox plastered over every page of sites that didn't support prop8 that they were supporting immoral and disgusting behavior? We have the right to free thought and expression in this country, even if you don't like it.

If the torch & pitchfork crowds are going after this dude now because he supported CA Prop 8, shouldn't they also call for a boycott of the state of California? You know, since a majority of their voters voted for the infamous Proposition 8 and passed it. I would say that voting for it counts as supporting it, right?

Not April's day joke. But a little bit misrepresentation. Prop 8. was about recognition of marriage by the state of California, it was not about whether or not same-sex marriage is legal or illegal. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Eich wants gay-couples to be outlawed.

Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.

Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.

If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.

However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid:

If he opposed Prop 8 he would have been in support of gay marriage, not opposed to it. Prop 8 was a California constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. I assume he was in support of Prop 8 and not opposed to it as indicated in the summary.

People's attitudes on this are extremely hypocritical. We rail against hatred and discrimination, and yet here we are with a "BURN THE HEATHENS!" mob mentality the second we find out about someone donating a relatively measly $1000 to Prop8. With the way some people are acting, you would think we just discovered that the guy was a raging pedophile. Did he really give out anywhere near the amount of damage that he and Mozilla are now receiving? Is this how we win the battle against discrimination? By replacing one form of irrational hatred and bias with another?
We may view it as poetic justice, but it's hypocrisy; plain and simple. People love to hate. The only thing that ever changes is who the current easy target is. Plenty of CEOs are vile, unscrupulous pigs who cheat on their wives and sexually harass female employees, but you won't see this sort of backlash against them because it isn't the current political hot topic.

OKC asked people to consider stopping using Firefox as long as Eich is the CEO. They haven't asked people to attempt to have Eich's marriage annulled, put money into a fund to pass laws that abrogate his fundamental human rights, or indeed to take any action against him at all.

I don't see why racists and homophobes shouldn't be called to account for the things they do and the things they support. He supported a law that in the end was unconstitutional--by definition, the thing he supported was against the rights that these people hold. It's not hypocritical to ask people to denounce inequality unless what you're proposing is a NEW KIND of inequality. Saying that you should think twice about using the product from a company that is run by someone with identifiably questionable positions on human equality isn't taking anything away from him other than his hopes that this will blow over quietly without notice.

And there's a way out for him, certainly. Admit that what he did was wrong, and contribute $1000 to marriage equality in some other state. Done.

I have no sympathy for racists or xenophobes. I live in Quebec, and right now an entire election hinges significantly on one party's desire to codify discrimination against religious groups. They've admitted that they'd use the Notwithstanding Clause--a clause built into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allows a province to override fundamental protections for five years--which is a tacit admission that what they're doing is deliberately holding groups of people down. It's dirty and disgusting and I want nothing to do with it.

If it's hateful of me to believe in the rights of other people, well, there's no hope for any of us.

...To Okay Stupid. This requested boycott is a cynical media troll that plays on people's lowest impulses. I doubt this gutter play buys Stupid Cupid much goodwill just some media attention. Besides, Eich has stated that he supports a diverse workplace. And a lot of people have evolved on this issue over the years.

California is a State that recognizes that people have a legal right to participate in lawful activities outside of work without consequence to their job. I voted against Proposition 8 and I am disappointed in everyone who supported it, but people have a right to their private lives and their religious freedom.

If the company, Mozilla, were discriminating in any way against employees or customers because of their sexual orientation, then taking them to task would be appropriate and ethical. However, hounding a private citizen at work is not ethical. Imagine if someone read the blog post of a pro same-sex marriage activist and got 1000 of their Christian friends to bombard the activist's place of employment with thousands of phone calls and dozens of angry citizens trying to gain access to the premises and talk to the employer about their employee's "immoral" behavior.

It is not McCarthyism, but it is the same sort of attitude, ruin the professional lives of all your perceived political opponents. While only a tiny sliver of proposition 8 opponents engaged in this sort of behavior, it does nothing but a disservice to their cause. When conservative Christians talk about being persecuted by homosexuals for their beliefs, most people rightfully laugh in their face, but actions like this do lead an iota of credibility to their claims, and we all know that anecdotes of someone claiming to have been forced to quit their job because of harassment from "homosexual activists" speak a lot more convincingly to many people than the millions of proposition 8 supporters who were not harassed.

The bottom line is understanding the difference between tolerance and acceptance. I tolerate a lot of bad behavior and stupid ideas because I am a tolerant person. When you go to work or school, you are required by law (at least here in California) to tolerate the beliefs of your coworkers, those who believe that same-sex couples should wed and those who are religiously opposed to the idea. You do not have to accept their beliefs, just tolerate them and their rights to them.

Acceptance of same-sex marriages is something that should flow naturally out of tolerance, not something that activists should try to force on people. As it becomes legal in more States and acquires more popular support, those who do not accept it will tend to die off or change their mind. You are never going to get 100% acceptance and harassing people in their workplace for what they believe in their personal life is not doing the same sex marriage cause any justice or service.

You are making a false dichotomy logical fallacy. Tolerance and Justice are not mutually exclusive concepts

Treating people as equals under the law is an issue of justice.

Not persecuting people for exercising their right under the law to engage in same sex marriage is an issue of tolerance.

Supporting the legality of same sex marriages is an issue of acceptance.

The issue of whether employers can discriminate against someone because of their race, religion, ethnicity, et cetera, is an issue of justice that was decided by the Civil Rights Act.

The government can and does force employers to mandate their employees tolerate the rights of people with different religious beliefs (including the belief that same sex marriage is wrong), ethnicities, genders, and in some States, gender identity and sexual orientation. In some cases, there are no doubt racists at work who do not accept the idea that people of different races or religions should be working alongside them. That is their right, and so long as a KKK member who believes blacks are 3/5ths of a person is tolerating the rights of his black coworkers and not harassing them, he is entitled to his private beliefs. In States like California, those private beliefs are protected by law.

And therein lies the problem with this sort of harassment. You are going beyond mandating that an employee tolerate the rights of his subordinates to be black, gay, Jewish, et cetera and mandating that he accept, in his personal life, your personal beliefs. In California, it would potentially be illegal for an employer to refuse to promote an employee because they donated $1000 to the KKK, the New Black Panthers, or any other lawful group advocating for a cause. These activists are essentially trying to force Mozilla to violate California labor laws, the same labor laws which protect their own right to not be fired for their personal activism.

Companies are made up of many, many people and some of them may have disagreeing opinions. And people are not the company.

OKCupid is only providing support for the idea an employer has a right to control their workers personal lives when they're off the clock, and being wage or salary has nothing to do with it, as folks here like to drag into the situation. Even if I'm a salaried worker I'm not "at work" 24/7. I have specific hours I'm doing my job, and hours I'm not. We are human beings and have our own opinions on issues, sometimes unpopular opinions. If you don't like the ideas of a single person you have an issue with the human, not the company. There's no reason to take any action against Mozilla just because you don't like their new CEO. Now, if his personal beliefs begin to shape corporate policy or find their way into product design, then you have an issue with Mozilla the company.

The CEO of a company, and anyone in general, has a right to influence the society he lives in and how his government makes laws. He can do what he wishes with his money.

He should not be punished for taking part in the democratic process, he shouldn't be silenced, he should be outvoted. So, if you care enough, you need to become politically active. Boycotting things amounts to mob rule, it works the same way repression works.

The CEO of Mozilla doesn't own Mozilla, nor was he using it to influence his worldview. He's essentially an employee

OKCupid is leveraging it's own brand and Mozilla's to benefit itself and real losers are gays who let themselves be taken cynically taken advantage of.

Corporations don't have opinions, they only reflect those of it's customers. Where was the Rainbow Oreo [theguardian.com] in the 80's and 90's when gay rights was a divisive issue? Why didn't Oreo have an opinion then? These kinds of corporations only support the winning side of the culture wars.
As we saw with Duck Dynasy and Cracker Barrel [forbes.com], if enough people complain, the company will unashamedly backflip. It's purely business, not ideological.

If I based every software purchasing decision on whether or not the company CEO was a prick, I wouldn't have many products left to choose from. Even choosing an OS would be next to impossible. Apple would be out (Steve Jobs was a notorious asshole who parked in handicapped spaces and refused to give to charities). MS would be out (one word: Ballmer). Shit, even Linux would be out (ever seen one of Torvalds' infamous rants?). I guess I could use FreeBSD or OS2/Warp. But I'm sure someone would have some bone to pick about their creators/parent companies too.

I just don't have the time to vet every goddamned person over every goddamned thing. It would be one thing if Mozilla as a company were putting up big "We hate gays!" banners on their webpage or something. But I just can't bring myself to care that their CEO may be a prick as an individual. After all, most of them are.

Prop 8 is a California-specific law and a clear majority of votes were in its favor. You're likely as ignorant about what Prop 8 is all about (hence the stupid comment regarding "dehumanizing") as you are regarding its context.

There's not much you can do about Jobs, Balmer, or Cook being assholes, but we probably can force Mozilla to kick Eich to the curb.

Using Firefox isn't acting against gay rights. Eich donated to an anti-gay marriage proposal, there's no evidence or even reason to believe that this is going to influence the company and its stance. Google on the other hand actively partakes in aggressive tax evasion and by using their software we are directly supporting that.

As to the logic that what he did was pretty assholish. I don't agree with it but I doubt we'd be supporting a campaign to get an atheist kicked off the board of a company in a highly religious country. There's a reason why it's better if we don't persecute people for holding views we disagree with, which is that it sets a precedent to persecute those whose views we agree with when they are in the minority.

OS/2 hasn't been IBM's for the better part of a decade, its controlled by eComstation [ecomstation.com] who does a decent amount of business supporting financial markets.

As for those trying to make excuse for Mozilla? 1.- like it or not the CEO is the face of the company and in this case the face belongs to a bigot, 2.- For those that use the "the state voted for it" excuse? The southern states voted repeatedly and by a VERY large margin that Jim Crow was fine, so by your argument the southern states should still be segregated, and finally 3.- Those that make the lame "gay agenda" bullshit excuse? Did you say the same about blacks in the 60s, that it was a "Negro agenda"? Its about CIVIL RIGHTS, PERIOD.

The state gives preferential treatment to married couples when it comes to taxes, child visitation, property inheritance, there are VERY few places that the government doesn't give some sort of preferential treatment to couples. While I personally believe it is unconstitutional since its clearly joining church and state until we are ALL treated as individuals under the law by the government? it very much IS a civil rights issue, since straight couples are given rights and privileges that gay couples do not get. Oh and before somebody makes the foolish statement about wills and the like? In most states the will does NOT change the tax burden which will be felt by a surviving spouse, which again isn't the same if that spouse was in a hetro marriage.

Maybe what we need is a push to persuade browser makers to link to perl and python implementations. Those are both much better languages for the purposes that JS was invented, and they're both completely open-source.

Actually, the right way to do it would be to replace all the embedded browsers' languages with tools for communicating efficiently with an arbitrary language plugin. Then we could use any programming language we like, incl

If you think closures are the reason people think Javascript isn't a good language you are 100% mistaken. Some people may complain about it but those people would complain about pointers too - simply because one haven't spend time to understand a concept doesn't mean the concept is a problem after all.

Because tolerance of intolerance is intolerance. I don't understand why you Republicans can't comprehend that. In other to be tolerant, you must be extremely intolerant of things that aren't tolerant.

Only if you have no belief whatsoever in the power of your own example and your own message. In that case, I suppose you would want to use some form of coercion.

But then, I question your true motives for believing what you believe. Is it to join the majority and avoid the shame and invective of being accused of intolerance? Or is it because you truly believe that tolerance is superior? If the latter, why not act like it's superior and let it stand on its own merits? Why not show everyone a shining, pure, hypocrisy-free example of what real tolerance is?

See, what many of you really want is is to issue righteous judgment against those who disagree with you. You think the fact that you are right excuses this desire. You still haven't performed the introspection and the difficult internal work of overcoming and transforming your own hatred. You think espousing the correct doctrine makes you superior, but you did not eliminate your own hatred at all. You merely found a socially acceptable way to channel it. This still fails to reduce the amount of hatred in the world. Hating evil does not make you good, no matter how desperately you want to feel self-righteous.

The failure to comprehend this is not because it is so difficult to understand. It's really simple, in fact. No, the failure to understand this is the same failing behind most of the vices that remain today: it raises too many difficult and uncomfortable questions concerning who you really are and why you believe what you believe. It's so much easier to find something external to yourself to hate. Isn't it?